Acts 25:8

Acts 25:8. While he answered for himself. No doubt repeating in the main the arguments briefly reported in the first trial before the Procurator Felix (chap. Acts 24:10-21), adding, probably, an indignant denial, and one that convinced his judge respecting the alleged treason against the emperor and the state.

Some years later, perhaps five or six, it was upon this accusation of treason that Paul's enemies no doubt finally compassed their purpose. They contrived, it has been surmised, in some way to weave round the apostle a network of suspicion that he had been connected with the disastrous fire of Rome the fire falsely ascribed to the persecuted Christians of the imperial city. He was re-arrested, we know, in that short period of activity and missionary labour which succeeded his liberation from the Roman imprisonment, as far as we can gather, on no mere Jewish accusation of transgression against the Mosaic law and the traditional ordinances of his race. Graver charges, no doubt, were alleged. It was not a difficult matter, in those days which followed the persecution after the great fire, to bring about the condemnation of one of the hated Nazarenes, especially of one so distinguished as the great Paul, the loved and hated. The second imprisonment at Rome, we learn from his own words to Timothy (Second Epistle), was close and rigorous in character. The brave, generous teacher wrote hopeless of life, though full of joy and hope as to his future, but not here, not with his disciples and his friends. After his Second Epistle to Timothy, over the apostle's life and work there falls a great hush, which tells too surely its own story. We hardly need the universal tradition of the Church to tell us what the end was.